Hey ya'll, remember reading about how the founding fathers and the American revolutionaries, our national "freedom fighters" that fought for our freedom from England and birthed our country, how would randomly execute 20+ people, regardless of affiliation, in various towns every day or two across the American northeast when they were trying to drum up support for their war, which in reality wasn't supported by more than perhaps 10% of the people? Remember how they intentionally used the tactic of spreading terror through multiple random kilings of innocent men, women and children to force their ideology on an unwilling populace?

No? Then stop comparing American revolutionaries to terrorists - they were/are not the same. You demean and delegitimize the use of both words with such stupid and specious comparisons. People who objectively, or even subjectively, compare a "freedom fighter" to a modern terrorist are disingenuous simpletons or trolls.

From a Western perspective, and I think backed up by basic moral reasoning in any well-developed and relatively-liberated country: while "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" categories do indeed overlap by individual definitions, practical application makes them mutually exclusive. The "freedom" that a modern terrorist is fighting for 99.9999% of the time is some ideology that would actually strip away freedoms that the targeted people already hold - that's why terrorists are comfortable with killing random people: those people are either already guilty of violating that ideology's particular morals and "deserve it," or the ideology considers their deaths valuable to the end state regardless of the people's feelings to the matter. It's an attempt to rationalize away the people as less important than "the cause," which automatically makes that cause an enemy of those people.

What freedoms are Islamic fascist "freedom fighters," or Maoist "freedom fighters," or fundamentalist-anything "freedom fighters" actually fighting for? Are they using terror campaigns against general members of the population? If so, they're crossed the line into "terrorist." Reference the PKK terrorists for an example - "freedom fighters" who crossed that line with their MO.

And for the record, if an organization targets only military and security forces of their supposed oppressors, and takes great pains to avoid casualties of innocent civilians, then they get to carry the banner of "freedom fighter" regardless of their merit of their declared "freedoms." Members of the miltary sign up to be put in harm's way for the benefit of their nation. That doesn't mena they'll get to live life in harmony with the rest of the world, if their own actions run contrary to peace with their neighbors. However, if the "freedom fighters" intentionally, and by standard MO, target civilians and non-combatants in order to use the terror of random death to achieve their means, then they are terrorists. It's a pretty simple and clear line. I look forward to comparisons to the US drone strikes, which are based on specific and actionable intel against a known enemy combatant or enemy leader, with a detailed "kill chain" of authorizations to proceed, and where there are far, far more shots not taken than ever even passed on for higher-level approval.

/rant//that any of this even needs clarification speaks to the erosion of logical thought in modern discourse///yeah, yeah, this is Fark, I know

CSCOPE labels fascism and Nazism as "conservative," despite the fact that both ideologies prescribe that the state should control everything and own all resources.

Uh, fascism/Nazism is conservative, extremely so, that's the whole point. Nowhere in Fascism is the idea that the state should own all resources. Last I checked, Nazi Germany had LOTS of private companies getting very rich off of the 3rd Reich. Private ownership of resources is communism, and violent anti-communism is part of the whole point of Fascism.

Volkswagen started there, the VW Beetle was created originally to be sold there. Bayer? The Asprin people? Yeah, they used concentration camp slave labor. . .and produced the Zyklon B poison gas for the gas chambers through subsidiaries. Messerschmit? Focke-Wulf? Those names that got associated with the Luftwaffe? Private for-profit companies (in both cases, these two lasted into the 1960's) That was kind of the whole point of Schindler's List, wasn't it? A Nazi war profiteer who owned and ran an ammo factory having a change of heart?

Total ignorance of history and political ideologies and creating strawmen versions of them to attack?

Just hammers in the political hit-piece nature of this right-wing anti-leftist "the liberals are trying to brainwash your kids" propaganda.

nubzers:Silverstaff: A story about an unnamed student that informed WND. . .

Trolling achieved.

One thing interesting FTA:

CSCOPE labels fascism and Nazism as "conservative," despite the fact that both ideologies prescribe that the state should control everything and own all resources.

Uh, fascism/Nazism is conservative, extremely so, that's the whole point. Nowhere in Fascism is the idea that the state should own all resources. Last I checked, Nazi Germany had LOTS of private companies getting very rich off of the 3rd Reich. Private ownership of resources is communism, and violent anti-communism is part of the whole point of Fascism.

Volkswagen started there, the VW Beetle was created originally to be sold there. Bayer? The Asprin people? Yeah, they used concentration camp slave labor. . .and produced the Zyklon B poison gas for the gas chambers through subsidiaries. Messerschmit? Focke-Wulf? Those names that got associated with the Luftwaffe? Private for-profit companies (in both cases, these two lasted into the 1960's) That was kind of the whole point of Schindler's List, wasn't it? A Nazi war profiteer who owned and ran an ammo factory having a change of heart?

Total ignorance of history and political ideologies and creating strawmen versions of them to attack?

Just hammers in the political hit-piece nature of this right-wing anti-leftist "the liberals are trying to brainwash your kids" propaganda.

Shiat, I went through the public school system in Texas and they made it pretty clear the differences between Fascism and Communism. I think I had one American History Teacher who was a die-hard conservative that purposely fudged the line between the two to fit her world view (Along with many, many other things) but I called her out on it and she pretty much dropped it.

CSB: I would get into arguments with her daily, and she was always shocked that a student would even think to argue with her "truth". Constantly called her out on shiat about the reasons f ...

Latinwolf:the Boston Tea Partiers disguised themselves as Native Americans in the hopes that members of those groups would get blamed.

Or, the colonists did it as a tribute, to symbolize their "America-ness" over their "European-ness", and simply to help disguise their identities. I doubt anybody actually believed that the people dumping the tea were Mohawks, who had no horse in that race, rather than colonial subjects who did.

SomeoneDumb:You don't have to like or approve of it, but it never hurts to learn things.

Sure, but if the article is to be believed the lesson was rather slanted and agenda driven. The example given is that they were teaching that the burqa was a fashion choice and omitting that women in many of the countries they are discussing are required to wear them by law under threat of a stoning death.

Its the modern equivalent of when whitewashed history lessons used to teach that Chris Columbus landed on Plymouth Rock and offered turkey and all the fixings to make peace with the savages and called it Thanksgiving.

CSCOPE labels fascism and Nazism as "conservative," despite the fact that both ideologies prescribe that the state should control everything and own all resources.

Uh, fascism/Nazism is conservative, extremely so, that's the whole point. Nowhere in Fascism is the idea that the state should own all resources. Last I checked, Nazi Germany had LOTS of private companies getting very rich off of the 3rd Reich. Private ownership of resources is communism, and violent anti-communism is part of the whole point of Fascism.

Volkswagen started there, the VW Beetle was created originally to be sold there. Bayer? The Asprin people? Yeah, they used concentration camp slave labor. . .and produced the Zyklon B poison gas for the gas chambers through subsidiaries. Messerschmit? Focke-Wulf? Those names that got associated with the Luftwaffe? Private for-profit companies (in both cases, these two lasted into the 1960's) That was kind of the whole point of Schindler's List, wasn't it? A Nazi war profiteer who owned and ran an ammo factory having a change of heart?

Total ignorance of history and political ideologies and creating strawmen versions of them to attack?

Just hammers in the political hit-piece nature of this right-wing anti-leftist "the liberals are trying to brainwash your kids" propaganda.

The historical revision casting fascism and Nazis as leftists is one of the more disturbing facets of modern day American conservatives.

Farce-Side:I always thought history and social studies classes were biased anyway. They have for the longest time had a pro-white people of European decent slant to them. Columbus discovered America, manifest destiny in a positive light, indigineous cultures portrayed as savages on every inhabited continent, and on and on and on. Maybe it's about time the curriculum makers switched it up.

CSCOPE labels fascism and Nazism as "conservative," despite the fact that both ideologies prescribe that the state should control everything and own all resources.

Uh, fascism/Nazism is conservative, extremely so, that's the whole point. Nowhere in Fascism is the idea that the state should own all resources. Last I checked, Nazi Germany had LOTS of private companies getting very rich off of the 3rd Reich. Private ownership of resources is communism, and violent anti-communism is part of the whole point of Fascism.

Volkswagen started there, the VW Beetle was created originally to be sold there. Bayer? The Asprin people? Yeah, they used concentration camp slave labor. . .and produced the Zyklon B poison gas for the gas chambers through subsidiaries. Messerschmit? Focke-Wulf? Those names that got associated with the Luftwaffe? Private for-profit companies (in both cases, these two lasted into the 1960's) That was kind of the whole point of Schindler's List, wasn't it? A Nazi war profiteer who owned and ran an ammo factory having a change of heart?

Total ignorance of history and political ideologies and creating strawmen versions of them to attack?

Just hammers in the political hit-piece nature of this right-wing anti-leftist "the liberals are trying to brainwash your kids" propaganda.

Shiat, I went through the public school system in Texas and they made it pretty clear the differences between Fascism and Communism. I think I had one American History Teacher who was a die-hard conservative that purposely fudged the line between the two to fit her world view (Along with many, many other things) but I called her out on it and she pretty much dropped it.

CSB: I would get into arguments with her daily, and she was always shocked that a student would even think to argue with her "truth". Constantly called her out on shiat about the reasons for going to war in Iraq, 9/11, the fact that Clinton tried going after Osama but the Republicans laughed at him and pulled the plug on it, welfare, you name it. I swear she got her info from FWD:FWD:FWD: and she had no problem trying to shove it down her students throats. One day she called me un-American. So I brought a copy of my enlistment papers to her class. Not a peep out of her after that.

/I hate people like her.//Rest of my teachers were fine, she was the only special one.

While the Boston Tea Party was soundly criticized for its anarchistic means (and Ben Franklin et al pooled money to repay the East India Company and apologize), the moral equivalency to suicide bombers is a bit crass.

Happy Hours:nubzers: I was fed up with her using her position as a teacher to push her personal politics in a history class. My apologies for thinking that education should be unbiased.

replying to me without quoting anything I actually typed?

Amazing.

No, you have an axe to grind and maybe your teacher did too.

Open your mind. You might learn something.

Ok enlighten me then. I'm always open to new things. How did I come off as having an axe to grind when the teacher initiated political discussions during a class with a clear bias that had nothing to do with the subject matter at hand and I offered counters to her ridiculous claims that even as 17 yo I was able to call bullshiat on?

/Also, sorry about not having the direct quote, I hit the button, typed my rebuttal and hit add, didn't proofread

"CSCOPE labels fascism and Nazism as 'conservative,' despite the fact that both ideologies prescribe that the state should control everything and own all resources."

Aside from the whole fact that I was tricked into reading a WND article, this part bothers me immensely.

I'm an amateur history buff, and one of my areas of interest is WWII in general and Nazi Germany in particular. I don't claim to be an expert -- nowhere close -- but I have a decent understanding of the basics. That statement is simply and factually wrong.

For those people who don't want to get into the complexities, look at one simple thing: the movie "Schindler's List." Who was Oskar Schindler, the protagonist? All else aside, he was a factory owner. He was not a bureaucrat who managed The People's Glorious Factory; he was a businessman who owned the factory.

You can argue whether Nazi Germany and the other fascist states at the time were conservative or liberal. You can argue whether public and state ownership of resources are the same thing, and whether either of them is necessarily communism. You can argue over a lot of things. But you can't argue (truthfully) that the fascist ideology prescribed that the state should own all resources, because there is documented fact and years of evidence showing that it did not.

You have to admire the boldness of WND in really going for it with this one. It's almost like a test to see if they can just print up anything with a "source" and see how much it's believed.

This falls into the genre of the conservative outrage story. These can be seen in an exaggerated manner with the Daily Mail's recurring welfare queen stories, but usually in the illegitimate sense with chain emails about Marines being refused service or an incident where Michelle Obama did something uppity.

You're supposed to read the story, be outraged about how bad things are today, and yearn for a yesteryear when such outrages did not occur. The older people get the more this type of story appeals to them. Talk radio is just a stream of these. There's a huge market for outrage.

PsiChick:Precision Boobery: PsiChick: Apparently, no mention was made of the fact that women in Saudi Arabia and Iran must wear the garment under threat of arrest and criminal punishment.

Yeah, that's retarded. Cultural relativism is a scientific term, not a moral one; anthropologists need to reserve judgement, but the rest of us are allowed to look at that and say 'yeah, fark no, that's not okay', and you do need to teach children when things are farked up.

What's not okay and how is it farked up?

Mandating wearing burqas, which, as has been noted, is not mandated in Iran at least, but certainly is de facto mandated in several ME countries. There's some pretty scary horror stories of women dying of asthma attacks because the burqa is basically making it too hot to breathe.

Except that isn't really true. There is certainly no widespread enforcement of an unoffial burka mandate. In fact, some countries, such as Syria, actually restrict the wearing of it.Primarily it is enforced under tribal warlords in Pakistan and Afghanistan (formerly close allies of the Taliban).

Head scarves are legally mandated in 2 countries and significant social pressure exists throughout the world for muslim women to comply. But very similar ideas have only been out of style for 50 years or so in the west and are really not any different that enforcing modest by outlawing women from being in public without a top.

Y'know, the thought just crossed my mind (I know, not a long journey...) that one of the problems in this discussion is that we're using the terms "terrorists" and "freedom fighters" as if they were mutually exclusive. Yet they're not.

Terrorism is a tactic. Freedom is a goal. Two different things.

So terrorists can have any of a number of goals. The DC snipers, for instance, were arguably terrorists, but their goal was to collect a bunch of money. An army fighting to repel conquerors from its country would be freedom fighters, despite using conventional military tactics instead of terrorism. They're not two sides of the same coin -- they're two different coins.

Since WWII has been brought into the thread, it's worth taking a look at some of the unconventional forces that participated. Some of the actions they carried out were undeniably done with the intent of terrorizing their targets -- both occupying armies and collaborators supporting them. They were unquestionably terrorists, and they were unquestionably freedom fighters.

Terrorism is a tactic. Freedom is a goal. Many tactics can be used to achieve the same goal, and the same tactic may be used to achieve many goals. They are not mutually exclusive.

CSCOPE makes lesson plans that are too "progressive" for Texas, but they're free so 80% of school districts use them anyway? Yeah. Right.

Then some teacher is so offended by having to teach about Islam at all, that he half-asses it, completely missing or glossing over the actual points of the lessons. (The treatment of women in the middle east, which, incidentally, doesn't actually cast Islam or ME culture is a positive light.)

And this is the CSCOPE peoples' fault?

That teacher is not fit to be in a classroom. Not because he's conservative. Not because teachers are lame or unions suck. That teacher should be out on his ass because he's a bad teacher who clearly can't suck it up long enough to read a farking lesson plan, or present that lesson in a coherent and sensical manner.

DerAppie:Just to pour some fuel on the flame war that is probably not too far away: just look at what democracy has done for women. Just about all countries where people have been "liberated" from their local dictator in the past decade have seen a huge decrease in women's rights. Democracy, sometimes it really is the problem.

Actually, based on your example, religion is the problem. It's the religious zealots that enforce sharia law and other nonsense - not democracy. Democracy just legitimizes their power when a majority of the country agrees with them.

Religion is almost always the problem anyway, that much should be evident to you...

office_despot:I think it would be pretty cool to wear a burqa for a day in school as a social studies assignment, just to see what it is like. I'm sure that one can do some things while wearing a burqa that one would be surprised at (I've seen a woman wearing one running on a treadmill.) but that there are other things that it would prove restrictive for. (How close do you want to move your robed arm to that bunsen burner?) People could have the experience of looking at other people while never being seen -- being invisible has its powers as well as significant disadvantages. And what if you were beautiful but no one could tell and all of a sudden people were focused on what you said, not how you looked? Some kids could have a lot to learn on that score.

I think there are a lot of people who talk about how horrible burqas are who haven't worn one and don't really know. I personally don't think they can be good, but I've got to admit I've never had the opportunity to try it.

There is further a massive difference between wearing a burqa here versus somewhere where it is required attire. Also, not only would you not be seen but you would also not be heard. If they really want to teach kids about other cultures, you need to teach the context and the good and the bad. We water everything down and the message is to teach acceptance. Acceptance is cool except when you are accepting of something that is oppressive, violent, and totally backwards. Why should we teach our children to be accepting of a culture that forces women to be treated as cattle and cover themselves up head to toe? A culture that stones rape victims to death.

office_despot:And what if you were beautiful but no one could tell and all of a sudden people were focused on what you said, not how you looked?

Oddly enough, some people can focus on what you say rather than how you look no matter if you're ugly or good looking.

It's just that it tends to get couched into terms like. "She's really ugly, but she's very smart" or "She's really pretty and she's smart".

Wow, that sounds sexist for some reason, but I don't see anything wrong with being sexy and I think intelligent women are sexy.

But with a burqa, I just think it would be, wow, "She's really smart but she wears a farking burqa"

office_despot:I think there are a lot of people who talk about how horrible burqas are who haven't worn one and don't really know. I personally don't think they can be good, but I've got to admit I've never had the opportunity to try it.

I'm not a transvestite, so I won't wear a burqa.

Cultural sensitivity can only go so far. I stopped short of saying something to an Indian dude who had a swastika on his lunch bag at work. I know a swastika is some sort of ancient Indian symbol which has nothing to do with Nazis, but come on dude - you're here on an H1-B visa. Can't YOU be culturally sensitive to Americans? There are Jews who work here too you know.

And even if most Americans aren't Jews, we fought a lot of Nazis during WWII. Keep your swastikas at home.

I kid, but seriously that could have potentially led to a lawsuit if it created a "hostile work environment". I wouldn't agree with such a lawsuit, but in our litigious society that was a real possibility.

Hey ya'll, remember reading about how the founding fathers and the American revolutionaries, our national "freedom fighters" that fought for our freedom from England and birthed our country, how would randomly execute 20+ people, regardless of affiliation, in various towns every day or two across the American northeast when they were trying to drum up support for their war, which in reality wasn't supported by more than perhaps 10% of the people? Remember how they intentionally used the tactic of spreading terror through multiple random kilings of innocent men, women and children to force their ideology on an unwilling populace?

No? Then stop comparing American revolutionaries to terrorists - they were/are not the same. You demean and delegitimize the use of both words with such stupid and specious comparisons. People who objectively, or even subjectively, compare a "freedom fighter" to a modern terrorist are disingenuous simpletons or trolls.

From a Western perspective, and I think backed up by basic moral reasoning in any well-developed and relatively-liberated country: while "freedom fighter" and "terrorist" categories do indeed overlap by individual definitions, practical application makes them mutually exclusive. The "freedom" that a modern terrorist is fighting for 99.9999% of the time is some ideology that would actually strip away freedoms that the targeted people already hold - that's why terrorists are comfortable with killing random people: those people are either already guilty of violating that ideology's particular morals and "deserve it," or the ideology considers their deaths valuable to the end state regardless of the people's feelings to the matter. It's an attempt to rationalize away the people as less important than "the cause," which automatically makes that cause an enemy of those people.

Worldwalker:clane, I'm kind of unclear on what you're trying to say there.

Reading comprehension fail coupled with weak troll attempt.

cameroncrazy1984:Civil_War2_Time: Most Texans blame Californians for ruining the "silicon hills" label we had back in the early 2000s, with their uppity attitudes and lackluster work ethic. Much of the .com bust we had in Austin during that time-frame was due to Californians.

That's some fine stereotypin' there, Lou.

/seriously, replace Californians with "blacks" or "indians" and then read that

Bad thing is that Texas is trying to get Californians to move there because of taxes. Taxes imposed by people THEY VOTED FOR.

Way to ruin a perfectly good place.

I don't know a single Texan that wants any more Californians to move here, and I've been knee deep in the Austin IT (.com) world before. Most Texans blame Californians for ruining the "silicon hills" label we had back in the early 2000s, with their uppity attitudes and lackluster work ethic. Much of the .com bust we had in Austin during that time-frame was due to Californians. They fit as well here as a rich Texan does in Aspen. They also ruined Austin forever.

Californians are not welcome in Texas...unless it's for a visit. Don't move here, please.

A student in the class told WND that the burqa-related lesson focused mainly on the lives of women in Muslim countries. The enveloping outer face and body covering was treated more or less as a fashion accessory.Apparently, no mention was made of the fact that women in Saudi Arabia and Iran must wear the garment under threat of arrest and criminal punishment.

Let's Google "Women In Iran"\

[www.irantravelingcenter.com image 311x346] Looks like a burqa to me.

/they have to wear the headscarf and loose fitting tops, yeah//yes, *this* is what I'm gonna nitpick about the stupid link I actually clicked on

CSCOPE labels fascism and Nazism as "conservative," despite the fact that both ideologies prescribe that the state should control everything and own all resources.

Uh, fascism/Nazism is conservative, extremely so, that's the whole point. Nowhere in Fascism is the idea that the state should own all resources. Last I checked, Nazi Germany had LOTS of private companies getting very rich off of the 3rd Reich. Private ownership of resources is communism, and violent anti-communism is part of the whole point of Fascism.

Volkswagen started there, the VW Beetle was created originally to be sold there. Bayer? The Asprin people? Yeah, they used concentration camp slave labor. . .and produced the Zyklon B poison gas for the gas chambers through subsidiaries. Messerschmit? Focke-Wulf? Those names that got associated with the Luftwaffe? Private for-profit companies (in both cases, these two lasted into the 1960's) That was kind of the whole point of Schindler's List, wasn't it? A Nazi war profiteer who owned and ran an ammo factory having a change of heart?

Total ignorance of history and political ideologies and creating strawmen versions of them to attack?

Just hammers in the political hit-piece nature of this right-wing anti-leftist "the liberals are trying to brainwash your kids" propaganda.

Yeah, there is not a single named source in the article. The whole article is BS. You would think that the Hardin County News, their local paper, would at least mention such a dastardly deed if it had happened, but there is not a word of it. It's a crock of shiat that Yahoo picked it up, and also a crock that Fark greenlit it. All WND knows is that it's getting a lot of hits on its BS, they don't care that most half-intelligent people don't believe it.

lewismarktwo:When I was in 3rd grade the teacher split the class into west and east Germany. The west got real snacks while the east got the literal crumbs out of empty bags and cupcake wrappers to eat. The west got to go outside to play and the east had to build block walls that the teacher would knock over once they were completed. As far as I remember she did this of he own volition.

Now that's some fine indoctrination! No basis in fact, and the only lesson is to hate the East.

A student in the class told WND that the burqa-related lesson focused mainly on the lives of women in Muslim countries. The enveloping outer face and body covering was treated more or less as a fashion accessory.Apparently, no mention was made of the fact that women in Saudi Arabia and Iran must wear the garment under threat of arrest and criminal punishment.

Let's Google "Women In Iran"\

Looks like a burqa to me.

/they have to wear the headscarf and loose fitting tops, yeah//yes, *this* is what I'm gonna nitpick about the stupid link I actually clicked on

I have a sneaking suspicion that all of the adults in the story (and possibly some kids too) need to be smacked around a bit just on general principle. And that includes the curriculum builders. Burqas are illegal in a good number of predominantly Muslim countries and having kids wear them is a completely idiotic idea--its not representative at all of the dominant trends in gendered clothing among more than a billion people.